Luminescent reporter assays are powerful research tools for a variety of applications. Last March we presented a webinar on this topic, Understanding Luminescent Reporter Assay Design, which proved to enlighten many who registered. The webinar addressed the importance of careful experimental design when using a luminescent reporter such as Promega’s Firefly or NanoLuc® Luciferase. Reporters […]
Genetic reporters are used as indicators to study gene expression and cellular events coupled to gene expression. They are widely used in pharmaceutical and biomedical research and also in molecular biology and biochemistry. Typically, a reporter gene is cloned with a DNA sequence of interest into an expression vector that is then transferred into cells. […]
Reporter assays using a single reporter, be it from a stable cell line or transient transfection, can benefit from normalization. Obviously, we are not talking about adding a second control reporter but normalizing to the number of live or dead cells in the well. Two cell health assays, CellTiter-Fluor™ Cell Viability Assay and CellTox™ Green […]
Updated 02/12/2021 Transient transfection is often used to perform reporter assays. We have advocated using a dual-reporter system for decades to normalize the data obtained and gain a clearer understanding of your results. The experimental reporter should vary with treatment and the control reporter should vary little with treatment. The control reporter thus serves as a […]
This article review was written by guest author, Amy Landreman, in the Cellular Analysis and Proteomics Group at Promega. Charcot-Marie Tooth (CMT) disease is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders affecting approximately 2.8 million people worldwide. The most common form of CMT, CMT Type 1A, is caused by a 1.5Mb genomic duplication on […]
Luminescent reporters offer virologists a convenient way to measure replication of viruses and are also used to image the spread of viruses in vivo in experimental systems. These reporter viruses are useful for evaluating the effects of antiviral drug treatments, testing the efficacy of potential vaccines, and studying the ways in which viruses replicate in […]
Studies of the larval stages of Aedes triseriatus (Eastern TreeHole Mosquito) indicate that the “tree hole” habitats in which these larva develop contain diverse microflora including the flavobacteria Elizabethkingia and Chryseobacterium. Extracts from these bacteria have many properties that might affect mosquito health, including antibacterial and anti-fungal activities. Understanding how these bacteria affect larval mosquito […]
A paper published on October 2 in the Journal of Virology describes an exciting development in the world of influenza research—the construction of a luciferase reporter virus that does not affect virulence and can be used to track development and spread of infection in mice. Insertion of luciferase reporter genes into viruses has been accomplished […]
As a technical services scientist, I get to hear about many amazing experiments at the planning stage, and I often talk to researchers about how to plan a reporter assay. For the uninitiated, reporter assays are used to “report” the ability or the efficacy of the inserted DNA element to induce/ regulate gene expression as […]
As part of my job I occasionally search the literature for papers citing use of Promega products in new or interesting ways. Any search on dual-luciferase reporters usually generates a lot of returns. A search for dual-luciferase on Highwire press generates over 700 articles from 2009 alone. So why are dual-luciferase reporter assays so widely […]
